Mary Bourne Artists Statement

Apprehension, understanding with the mind and/or senses.

When I make sculpture I make it with my mind, hands, eyes and heart. It is informed by a sense of weight, density, balance, space, fragility, endurance and an understanding of the passage of time. It is coloured by my own value system and emotional view of the world.

There are so many words even to begin describing the process of making art, but all these can ever be is a list of fragments of experience. They cannot possibility encompass the entirety of that thrilling intellectual, emotional, and physical thing that happens when we make a piece of art. Neither can they describe the experience of perceiving art as a consumer, a being with a body, mind and soul.

Words are great describing things, but we are so reliant on them now that other forms of perception seem to have become secondary. Words are abstract representations for things, often real physical things. Just as the supermarket distances us from food production, so words can distance us from the physical reality of the objects they name.

We exist in a physical world and if we are to survive the challenges ahead as the climate changes and resources become scarcer we need to understand the uncompromising, immutable rules that govern it. We need to understand again the importance of perceiving things both with our articulate minds and with the intelligence of our senses. These tell us what we can achieve in a physical world, a world that is indifferent to words.

Art, where the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual come together in a unified experience, is one place where the physical can again take its place as an equal alongside the intellectual. It is a place where perception takes in so much more than words can ever describe. So, for now, enough of words.